Legacy (Worm)

[notes]

What follows is yet another attempt at a writing exercise. It follows directly on Cenotaph (SB thread) and Wake (SB thread).

As I wrote before, the only cure for sophmore slump is senior year... and that means keeping at it until quality and effect are conscious choices.

Updates are likely to be lumpy, due to some experiments on the backend.

Legacy

May.1
May.2
May.3
May.c

June.1
June.2
June.3
June.s

July.1
July.2
July.3
July.j

August.1
August.2
August.3
August.m

September.1
September.2

Timeline:

May.1 Sunday May 22nd (before midnight) through Monday May 23rd (after midnight)
May.2 Monday May 23rd (pre-dawn — dawn)
May.3 Monday May 23rd (dawn — noon)

May.c Tuesday May 31st (evening)


June.1 Tuesday June 7th (pre-dawn — morning)
June.2 Tuesday June 7th (morning — afternoon)
June.3 Tuesday June 7th (afternoon — evening)

June.s Sunday June 12th (evening — midnight)

July.1 Monday July 4th (morning — sunset)
July.2 Monday July 4th (sunset — evening)
July.3 Monday July 4th (evening)

July.j Friday July 22nd (late afternoon)

August.1 Saturday August 20th (morning — midday)
August.2 Saturday August 20th (midday)
August.3 Saturday August 20th (afternoon)
August.m Tuesday August 30th (afternoon — late evening)

September.1 Monday September 5th (dawn — afternoon)
September.2 Monday September 5th (afternoon)

 

[notes]

May.1


I returned to Brockton Bay in the dead of night. It was a question of practicality: the roadblocks were intended to allow free travel, but only outward. A measure intended to help the relief efforts, to lighten the burden of providing food, water, and shelter to those who remained in the wreckage left by Leviathan’s waves and scarred by various cape fights.


Oh, I likely could have walked through a checkpoint at noon had I chosen: official policies always make exceptions for officials, and — even if I wasn’t a member of the Protectorate — I’d walked enough patrols with the Wards that the BBPD officers manning the roadblock would have recognized the costume, regarded it as friendly. The ensuing paperwork and scrutiny would have been inconvenient, though.


I wasn’t particularly worried about the results of a PRT inquiry into the events of nine days past — the Slaughterhouse Nine were acceptable targets under every legal and moral code I’d ever heard of — but dealing with the bureaucracy could easily tie me up for a day or two.


More, if they started asking about Miami.


So when I saw the picnic shelter casting a pool of light across the grass of Robert Wilson Park, I turned aside from the promise of coffee and company to make my way through the shadowed trees. I could feel my way through the darkness with my swarms, but with the moon not yet risen there was nothing to see with my body’s eyes but blackness. Memories filled the void unsummoned, memories of walking here in happier times, boots crunching through the snow, bare branches of the trees strung with white lights, each breath puffing fog upon the frost-sharp air.


Walking hand in hand with my parents.


It had never been as grand a show as the drive-by shows put on elsewhere, with mile upon mile of animatronics and synchronized light displays, but I’d never liked those as much anyway. There was a simplicity to a walk in the snow with hot chocolate to follow… and it had been one of the few family traditions to survive Mom’s death.


In time I stepped out of the park, stopped to look out upon the city I’d grown up in. The skyline was mostly dark — power wouldn’t be fully restored for some time yet, and the city’s surviving inhabitants were mostly huddling in official or unofficial refugee camps for the moment. Still, there were scattered exceptions. A cluster of balloon lights marked a demolition crew, working through the night, and I could see two of the refugee camps on the horizon, floodlights set above the administrative and medical trailers. The beam of light rising to the sky would be the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters, itself too squat to be visible from this vantage.


The building on the hill with lights glowing within its windows could only be St. Jude’s. The hospital was not as bright as it had been: the spotlights which had been trained on the red cross on the building’s side were gone, and the top floor of the building was missing entirely. Scion, first and perhaps greatest of parahumans, had erased it with a single golden blast as silent as it had been precise. He never spoke… but it wasn’t hard to guess why he’d done it.


Bonesaw had set up a lab there.


Nine days past, I’d walked up silent stairways, through hallways broken and slick with blood, felt the surviving staff and patients huddling in wholly justified fear from those I went to face. I hadn’t won the confrontation there so much as escaped it alive, but that night of horrors had ended with the Nine broken and fleeing… and the hospital staff, apparently, just going right back to work. I felt my cheeks pull back into a fierce smile and raised one hand in salute.


This was the city I’d fought for; the city I would see reborn.


Somehow.


There were two major problems to deal with before I could get that effort properly started.


Three, if you counted the need to prevent the world itself from ending in the meantime.


One problem at a time.


I turned northwest on Beacon street, and resumed walking by the light of a rising half-moon.


The problems I faced right now had to do with reconstruction and Empire 88. The former, well… rebuilding a city was expensive. I could and would pledge my own assets to the task, and while they were enough to make me rich by most measures — particularly after the bounties on the S9 cleared! — they did not begin to approach the scale necessary to rebuild a city. Fortress Construction had pledged billions to the reconstruction, and I had some influence with them, enough to keep them involved even after Leviathan struck… but again, that wasn’t nearly enough money to get it done.


It wasn’t strictly a question of scale, anyway: there were some problems where increased funding only meant increased waste. My father had, more than once, lamented the fact that the city had spent, over the course of a decade, hundreds of millions on enterprise zones and three different master-planned Boardwalk revitalizations, when for the same amount they could have dredged the bay and reopened the docks. Not that all that money had been wasted: Medhall Health Systems probably wouldn’t have expanded as much as they did without the tax incentives, and Stansfield Semiconductors probably would have moved out entirely… but mostly, those programs had only succeeded in creating jobs for lobbyists and consultants.


I was acutely aware that I didn’t know enough about urban planning to do any better. I’d found an architect, Cyril Bernsheim, who did. He was undeniably brilliant, a man with a deserved reputation for elegant work done ahead of time and under budget. Also, a man with an equally deserved reputation for erratic behavior and violence when his plans weren’t followed precisely, to the point where he didn’t actually get much work as an architect.


Understandable, given that ‘Cyril Bernsheim’ was a hobby for the villain Accord. The time that he didn’t devote to hobbies like landscape architecture, working out hypothetical ways to solve world hunger, or revolutionizing flat-pack furniture, he spent planning elaborate heists and aesthetically satisfying deathtraps. Apparently, when your power is superhuman planning, arranging ironic Rube Goldberg executions is… soothing.


Sensing a shortcut, I turned to cross a muddy field, still strewn with the debris of the houses that had stood there. New, expensive, and expansive, they hadn’t been built to withstand tidal waves. I picked my way through the wreckage, avoiding the sinkhole where the basements had been, trusting to the senses of the insects throughout the area to keep from a misstep.


The auditor I’d engaged was another villain, of sorts: the Number Man kept the books for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of criminals and villains. Anonymous, efficient, and discreet, I knew very little about him except that for the last two decades he had reliably been able to avoid every attempt to trace his clients through the money. I believed that what he could do, he could also detect.


They were both, I thought, trustworthy, in a sense. The Number Man was a faceless enigma… but his inviolate word was a reputation decades in the making. Accord, for his part, would sooner die himself than deliver a plan that wasn’t to his own personal standards of excellence — though he might well kill me, or try, the day I failed to see his plans implemented to those exacting standards.


Until that day, I’d get whatever work out of him I could. My city needed a miracle, and there were very few who could conceivably deliver. It would have been easier to find someone who could go hand to hand with Behemoth… but not every problem could be solved with raw force.


Not even some of the problems that looked eminently punchable.


Empire 88 was the last gang left standing in Brockton Bay. The last month had been a very bad time to be a hero in Brockton Bay: half the Protectorate was dead or out with injuries; New Wave had been lucky to escape with a single death; and the Wards had been all but annihilated. It had been even harder on the local villains: the Archer’s Bridge Merchants were dead; Coil was dead and his mercenaries decamped; all the ABB save Lung himself were dead, and Lung had left the city. Visiting villains had fared no better: the Travelers were dead or imprisoned; the Teeth were no more… even the Slaughterhouse Nine’s recruiting trip had ended with substantial losses. The Empire had lost eight capes over that span — more than enough casualties to obliterate any other faction, including any of the heroic ones.


More deaths than any two other groups had suffered.


I stepped onto empty streets once more toward Captain’s Hill and home, mind turning over the problem I’d have to face in the morning as the rising moon cast my shadow before me.


The neo-nazis had taken those losses in their fights against Leviathan, against the heroes, against Lung, against the Slaughterhouse Nine, against the Teeth, against me… and they still had more capes answering their call than any other group in the city, including the Protectorate.


Numbers weren’t everything, of course, but they weren’t nothing either. Nor were the Empire’s capes individually weak: Purity had come as close to killing Lung in an open contest of force as anyone I’d ever seen, and against Leviathan… only two capes lasted longer in that fight than Hookwolf. Armsmaster was probably one of the five strongest members of the Protectorate; Eidolon was the strongest, and possibly the strongest cape anywhere… unless that title went to Scion.


Worse, the Empire was already recruiting back up to strength. The Empire’s newest recruit, Cadmus, had debuted by barging into a fight between Crawler and Lung, one that had left bubbling ash for blocks around. I had seen the golem he’d raised silhouetted against the fires of that fight, towering a dozen stories tall. Cadmus had not managed that alone — there’d been a half-dozen other capes with him, including Legend, and Scion himself had intervened — but the results spoke for themselves: at the end of that three-way fight between the giants, Cadmus held the field: Crawler was dead, and Lung had been put to literal flight, four wings lifting the dragon he’d become into the clouds.


The road beneath my feet rose, and its track along a ridge let me look out over the ground where that fight took place: an outer ring of half-burnt buildings where the fire had been slowed by rain and later snuffed by Scion, surrounding a bare patch in the city. It stood out even in contrast to the greater extent of fire damage further north and east, where the Empire’s earlier trap for Lung had backfired and filled that section of the city with over a thousand tons of flaming bunker oil.


The scar made by that was fire damage, burnt black and gritty where the Leviathan’s tidal waves hadn’t washed the debris clean. The patch of ground where Crawler and Lung had fought was shiny, smooth and slick and gnarled in a sort of organic way that I hadn’t seen outside photos of lava flows — but then, by the end, those two were liquefying the ground beneath them through sheer heat.


Amidst that slick black rock, I could see faint tracks: the twisted spiral where Crawler had collapsed in his death-throes; the sharp lines where Lung’s claws had found traction; and the footprints of the giant Cadmus had conjured. It had been a clash of the Titans, the kind of fight rarely seen outside an Endbringer’s assault. But then, perhaps that had been Crawler’s aim: to become a fourth Endbringer. He had deliberately courted that kind of opposition, trusting that his adaptive healing would only leave him the stronger for it.


I didn’t engage in straight-up fights like that: I couldn’t. Surprise, misdirection, and guile were my tools, tools which had ever served the weak against the strong. Acting alone, I could pick off some of the Empire… but not all of them, not before they responded. And that simply wasn’t enough, not when at least one of their capes could credibly threaten to level the city in any extended fight.


Most of my successes against the gangs had come from manipulating them into warring upon each other… but now there were no other gangs left. I could try to send the Protectorate against them, or New Wave. But both of them together, plus the Wards, could barely equal the Empire’s numbers.


A fight like that would involve casualties for the heroes, and likely deaths. Say what you like about the Empire’s morals, their morale was remarkable: Stormtiger’s death proved that. The Butcher had possessed every cape that killed him, puppeted over a dozen villains and heroes into continuing his bloody work, growing stronger with each power he added to his hoard. Stormtiger killed the Butcher’s penultimate incarnation and then, in the moments following ended his own life… and with it, the Butcher’s parasitic existence.


No, I’d need something else. If there were no other enemies left, I’d have to find a way for the Empire to fight amongst themselves. With any luck, this time they wouldn’t have a strategist of Krieg’s caliber, capable of ending a civil war without casualties lost to infighting.


Another decapitation strike?


Maybe, and maybe not. Removing Kaiser to make way for Krieg had proved no bargain, and Hookwolf was — while a formidable melee combatant — not half the strategist Krieg had been. In fairness, the direct approach had the virtue of simplicity… if you could pull it off.


Hookwolf could.


After Alexandria and Legend went down and the rout began, after the general retreat was called, after even Chevalier and Dauntless had abandoned Armsmaster to fight on alone, buying time for all else to flee… Hookwolf leapt at Leviathan, asking nothing more than the chance to hurt his foe. Flechette had given him a weapon that would cut even an Endbringer, and the former pitfighter had launched himself on a suicidal charge, injuring the monster as none before him had. He might not be subtle — witness the fact I’d been able to nudge him into trying that kamikaze charge — but Hookwolf was tough… or he wouldn’t have lived to boast about it.


No, if I removed Hookwolf, whoever replaced him was likely to be more cunning. Strength and toughness I could work around, within limits; cunning… cunning could be dangerous. I was a good deal more fragile than most of my foes, spider-silk armor or not. Jack Slash had shown me that, without my power, a fit adult in melee could kill me with his bare hands, armor or no armor — and Hookwolf could likely do it in seconds.


But Jack had been clever, if not quite so clever as he thought, and Hookwolf… the last time I’d seen him, he’d also been trying his best to kill me with his bare hands — paws? Sharp steel extrusions? — and while those blows had cratered asphalt, they had also been entirely predictable. I sent him off chasing a bug clone while I finished my conversation with Lung.


Step one, in the morning, would be to track Hookwolf down. Getting close enough to listen in on their boss using my bugs would tell me much of what the Empire was up to, and how it might be brought down. I didn’t know where he might be lairing these days — the information I’d had on the Empire before Leviathan was mostly moot — but there were a number of self-organized refugee groups outside of the FEMA camps, and E88 had an unofficial presence in several. In the aftermath of Leviathan, they’d mostly confined themselves to keeping order (brutally), providing extra supplies (stolen), and healing (Othala’s). All in all, they were nicer places than many other such camps… provided you met their criteria for fellowship.


As the road wound onward up Captain’s Hill, I stepped off it and turned my focus to the edge of my range. Not long now, and I’d be on the farm again. I’d be there sooner, and with better scenery, for taking the twisty network of game paths I was now on. They made for good running, too, dipping in and out of thickets — rosebushes gone wild, often enough. They hadn’t been pruned properly, and no longer resembled the neatly trimmed hedges that once outlined the farm… but there were buds aplenty, and they would bloom soon enough. The failed apple orchard tucked into one corner of the farm was past its peak blossoming, with only a scant few petals hanging on the branches — gossamer in the moonlight — and a scattered carpet glowing beneath the trees.


Beautiful as it was, it wasn’t home — the house I’d grown up in had been destroyed by one of Bakuda’s bombs — but it was as close as I had left. Quinn Calle’s idea, his way of gently nudging me toward a life of producing honey and spider-silk instead of going out to fight villains, was a farm. It was small — several hundred acres, with most of them not arable — and too hilly to be profitably farmed with conventional methods, but too large to be a second home for most; burdened with enough historical preservation obligations to prevent any kind of development or indeed real renovation, but not historic enough to have an endowment or any tourism income.


But then, I wasn’t going to farm it conventionally. From the main house — the very house to which Captain Brockton had retired — most of the farm was within my range. In the three weeks that I’d lived there, I’d stocked the place well with bees and black widow spiders: the former for the honey and the latter for the silk. More than enough for my own armor — enough to begin providing it at scale to the PRT, once I’d bred enough spiders. Lucrative enough for most purposes.


Rebuilding a city wasn’t most purposes.


Still, it would be good to see the place again, set the hives in order, sleep in my own… well, not bed, technically. I’d moved into a house left empty for years, with most of the furniture auctioned off. A bed had been ordered, before Leviathan, but the delivery trucks weren’t exactly running in Brockton Bay at present. Which left sleeping on one of the chaise longues left by the previous owner, with sleeping bags and camping blankets. The farm had a well, which meant I’d have water… but not water pressure. When Shatterbird destroyed glass and electronics throughout the city, she’d also destroyed almost every machine newer than 1980, almost certainly including the electric pump — not that I’d had electricity since Leviathan anyway. Thankfully, the manual pump behind the house was ‘historic’ enough that it had survived the two previous owners.


Already, some of my land was coming into range, and my attention sharpened, picking out the the tiny sparks of insect consciousnesses despite distance or cover, tracing out the patterns that they’d made. Some of my hives were drawing down their reserves of honey. May was a season for harvesting pollen, but the hives here were much more closely spaced than would be found in nature, and conflict had emerged without my guiding hand.


The spiders had mostly kept to their assigned areas, and borne up quite nicely considering the lack of food provided by me. They hadn’t gone on to lay more egg sacs, as I would have had them do, but that was something I could restart soon enough. There were already dozens of sacs per mature female spider waiting, with the first set due to hatch later this week, and I needed to be present then. Black widow spiderlings were voraciously cannibalistic. Present, I could both feed them other insects and keep them from fratricide; in my absence, I could lose over 90% of my expected yield for that hatching… and I needed them, for the next round of expansion more than for the silk they would weave themselves. They were troublesome, but they were also the second best source of spider silk in the world, and the only one I had access to at present.


The rest of the insect life throughout the farm wove a dizzying pattern, one not of my making and largely beyond my comprehension. Oh, I didn’t doubt any entomologist would have given much to be able to sense it all directly, as I could, but whatever power let me compel them, sense them, and sense through them hadn’t come with an instinctual comprehension of ecosystems. Even without that understanding, it was still something strangely beautiful to see the way the land itself teemed with life. Despite the tidal waves, despite the fires, despite all that had devastated my city so… here, the only truth that mattered was springtime.


That fantastically complex tapestry of life was something I normally tuned out, focusing instead on mapping out the terrain and the people around me, or on what I could make the insects do for me. Entrances, exits, threats… options. The important things in life, or at least the important things in a fight. Still, for the moment I could relax, letting a fragment of my attention keep my feet on the game trail, stepping over roots without looking while my attention flared out in every direction at once, reorganizing hives and spider nests and gently tracing the wider, intertwining, patterns. The busy tidiness of rearranging my work comforted, while my mind’s eye held the vast web around me, felt the the nocturnal rhythms of life pulsing — moths, crickets, some of the ant species, so many different kinds of beetles!


They treated with and preyed upon each other in a thousand ways I never would have seen with my eyes, on scales I never would have guessed: the sheer interwoven density of the insect world never failed to astonish, and I knew that there were things still smaller that I could perceive only indirectly if at all. Similarly, I had no sense for plants, or for anything much larger than a crab… but larger creatures generally revealed themselves with their impact on the world of insects. The distribution of ticks told me of the dozen deer grazing in thickets that I would have walked past unknowing; a moth disturbed in flight drew my attention to the silent passage of an owl a quarter mile away, and the almost silent death of a mouse that followed.


To my body’s senses, the woods would have been dark — the way the moon’s light broke through the foliage occasionally did more to wipe out my night vision than illuminate — and almost silent. If I hadn’t been using my power to guide my footsteps, they would likely have been the loudest thing in the woods. Yet to the sense of my power, and the senses it let me borrow, the night was full of life and activity. Oh, there were plenty of creatures huddled down for the night: a termite hive’s tunnels had intersected some mammal’s burrow filled with small furry forms huddled close for warmth — rabbits, at a guess. Further up a rise, there was an anthill sending a major expedition to feed on the leavings of three forms lying together, and those looked to be… human.


Set up in a hide with a view of the house and the road both.



···---···



If they’d been more careful in policing their trash, I might not have found them — it was in idly tracing the knot of activity around that rich source of calories that I recognized the shapes of humans lying prone. After that, it was obvious once I looked: their camouflage cloth wasn’t quite right, to insect eyes; the faint noise of a zipper was like nothing in nature; the very feel of a synthetic windbreaker beneath a fly’s feet was distinctive.


The outline of a gun was still more so.


Shatterbird might have ruined most modern machines in the city, but firearms were in many ways startlingly simple. Mechanical linkages, chemical energy: keep it clean, point, and shoot. Depending on where their ammunition had been stored, Leviathan might have gotten it wet… or not. If it had been doused, it might now misfire… or not.


Either way, it was the kind of threat I preferred to know about ahead of time, and I hadn’t noticed them when they first came into range. I hadn’t been looking for people, I’d been checking on the state of my farm… and I’d seen only what I sought to see.


Too much of life was like that: the fact of their presence had been there for minutes, and I hadn’t recognized it. I’d missed greater threats like that before — I’d looked right past Lung himself, once — and I probably would again. This time, this time, I’d gotten lucky. They might not have been much of a threat to me — unscoped rifles at hundreds of yards, at night? On an unilluminated target? I wasn’t an expert marksman, but that didn’t seem like an easy shot to me.


Besides, my costume was bulletproof.


Probably.


If I wasn’t sure about that, no one else could be. Certain thinkers excluded, perhaps — but I’d gone to some trouble to suggest that I was far closer to invulnerable than the truth. My foes believed — I hoped — that I could discorporate into a cloud of insects and reform from any other such cloud in my range. There were capes capable of outright obliterating hundreds of acres in moments, but only a handful… and every bullet deterred was one I didn’t need to dodge.


Sleep wouldn’t be coming soon tonight, and I absently directed my body onto a path that would let me circle back through the woods instead of approaching the house.


A three man team with the best rifles, scopes, and explosives the modern military could provide were a credible threat to some capes, particularly with surprise. But not to all, and perhaps not even to most. If they’d tried it on Hookwolf or Lung, for example, he’d simply take the punishment, run them down, and rip them apart. Even the more physically fragile capes usually had at least one trick that could handle this kind of threat. Forcefields, invisibility, regeneration, illusions, teleportation, phasing out of reality… it wasn’t a short list.


As an attempt to ambush some normal, it was overkill. As an attempt to ambush me, it… wasn’t really credible. Unless… a side of my attention turned to checking whether there were other groups present, while I focused on unravelling the puzzle presented.


Why were they here?


They were within my range, and none of them looked to be a cape — no costumes, no masks. Three normals, one of them asleep? I could capture them casually, and ask. But… why three?


Why one asleep?


Three of them, one sleeping… beyond senseless, if they knew I was returning tonight. If they didn’t know…


A thought, and I checked the trench by their bagged trash. Human waste — piles of it. How many days did that represent? I had no idea: how much waste did someone produce in a day, normally? I’d never really tracked my own output, and I winced at the thought I might have dig a trench of my own soon.


Toilets aren’t a big deal until you don’t have them, and my situation now was actually worse than it had been immediately post-Leviathan. The farm had — had had — an independent well and septic system, but without the electric pump I’d have just one flush. Well, I could hand-pump water, and carry it to refill the toilet’s reservoir each time… but first, I’d have to deal with whoever was watching where I slept.


I liked flush toilets, but that was no way to die.


Attack the problem from the other end: by their trash, they’d just been eating ration bars. A quick count with the ants told me that there were just over a dozen wrappers there: enough for two to five days depending on what kind of rationing they were on — assuming their numbers hadn’t fluctuated over time. I hadn’t been back to the farm for over a week, and they’d come prepared to wait days if necessary.


So they hadn’t known the time, but that was only half the question: how could they have known to wait here?


Who knew about this location? The PRT did from when I’d invited the Wards, and the PRT had access to soldiers as well as the capes of the Protectorate… but these men weren’t wearing the standard chainmail and faceless helmets, and their clothing, while covered in military camouflage, was uneven in pattern and quality both. Military surplus, not active military or paramilitary, if I had to guess.


New Wave knew, for when I’d invited the Wards I’d invited Panacea as well… but they were two families of parahumans living openly as independent heroes, without secret identities. Not only did they not even have any normals working for them that I’d ever heard of, they were allies… or so I’d think. Perhaps even a friend, for one of them. Besides, they were the last group I could imagine launching an ambush on a cape’s home: sure, they argued that a culture of masks and secret identities undermined accountability… but their answer to that had been to remove their own masks, not to drag others into the public eye.


The Undersiders knew, for I’d invited them once to thank them, both for saving my life the first time I fought Lung and for helping me after my father died. But… they were gone. Disbanded. Two had crossed the line from villain to hero and joined the Wards, and I’d had a hand in giving them that choice. There were two others still ‘considering their options’ at last report… but I couldn’t really see either of those using paramilitary normals against me, nor see any reason for them to be hostile at all.


Could they have talked? Been made to talk?


I turned the problem over in my thoughts as my absent-minded steps picked a new trail, one that would lead me toward a cluster of the hives I’d set up to stand sentinel around this part of the farm.


No way to tell just now. Who else knew?


Occam’s razor said this was the Empire: who else was active in the city?


And… what did they know? Hookwolf… we’d talked for a time, when we’d had an alliance against the Slaughterhouse, before Lung shattered that accord. He knew that I’d lost someone to the ABB, and that Bakuda and Oni Lee had fallen in my reprisal. Had I told him that I’d lost my father? A lot of people in Brockton Bay had lost someone to Bakuda… but almost all of those deaths occurred after Bakuda died, when her dead-man trigger served its intended purpose, and set off a rather extensive insurance policy. The casualties had been lighter than they could have been, compared to what might have happened had those bombs gone off during the day. Still, any other city, any other month, and it would have been a major disaster. Hundreds dead, maybe more — they hadn’t finished counting by the time Leviathan showed up.


My fault.


And Bakuda’s, I knew, but it didn’t feel that way. If I’d been smarter, or more careful, I could have figured out the existence of that dead-man switch; if she’d been smarter, she’d have understood that her insurance policy didn’t work on people who didn’t know about it. Then again, maybe she just wanted to make sure she took a lot of people with her when she went.


That detail alone might have been enough for them to track me down: there couldn’t have been more than two dozen men killed by Bakuda in the month before she died, and not all of them would have had children survive them. Fewer still who would have been survived by someone who fit the age profile, the body profile — the Empire had never seen me out of costume, but that still left them with an idea of my height and build.


And my hair. I wore it long, the one attractive feature that I’d inherited from my mother, and I’d designed my mask with a gap in the back to let it flow out. There wasn’t much about my body of which I was proud, but I was proud of my hair.


That pride had nearly gotten me killed, fighting Jack Slash.


So. If the Empire was on the ball, they could have narrowed it down to the daughters of men killed by Bakuda of a certain height and weight, with a certain hair color and length… that might have reduced the set to only a few people. Or maybe down to just one.


Aside from the Empire… well, any group with a sufficiently powerful thinker might have pulled the farm’s location out of the air. There would be groups interested in moving in on Brockton Bay, looking to fatten up on the reconstruction contracts, and there were even a few who might have a personal interest in finding me. The Fallen. The Elite. I didn’t think the Colombians would come this far north, but they surely had cause.


It didn’t really matter at the moment how they’d found me; what mattered right now was what I was going to do about it. Removing these three would be trivial; keeping them from sending a signal in the process only slightly more difficult. Would that be enough? They found me; assume that they’re sharp, sharp enough to understand that these three aren’t a real threat. So what were they…


Ah. A tripwire.


Keeping these men, once captured, from failing to send a pre-arranged all-clear signal, on demand or at regular intervals… that would be much harder. Perhaps impossible. Did that matter to me?


As I stepped across a tangle of roots, I found my head nodding unconsciously.


Surprise mattered, particularly to me. Trying to beat Hookwolf by straight force… well, Lung hadn’t managed that yet, and I really wasn’t likely to do so. That left misdirection and cunning, which were much easier to manage while I had the initiative. When I’d told Mannequin that we were both ambush predators, it had been true… and his decision to take what looked like a straight fight on ground of my choosing had left him imprisoned under tons of insects.


Dead, now — Dragon had taken him into custody after I’d given her his location, and the PRT had executed the standing kill order on his head. There wasn’t really much alternative: putting a sealed environmental systems tinker into an inescapable prison had… obvious issues. Still, it was a tragic death to all who remembered the hero Sphere had been, before the Simurgh drove him to madness, self-mutilation, and murder.


I could try to interrogate them, outrun any alarm caused by their failure to signal, open the conflict with overwhelming and sudden force… Bakuda was still the one who had come closest to killing me, and the list of those who’d tried included Lung, Mannequin, Jack Slash and the Siberian. Technically, Leviathan had come closer — but Endbringers were in a class by themselves. She’d managed that by striking first, and faster than I could have imagined possible. It was a lesson I’d taken to heart.


Still… the time for sudden violence would be after I had a target. If I’d known for sure that those three had Hookwolf’s location in their head, could be made to talk… actually, there was one way I could ensure they’d contact him — but that involved giving up surprise. No, using myself as bait was a counsel of desperation.


Besides, I could always try plan ‘alpha strike’ or plan ‘bait’ later if being stealthy didn’t work out; the converse wasn’t true. Which meant… no fight right now.


I skinned my mask off, shaking my head in the crisp air, and let the movement dry the beads of sweat that inevitably accumulated under my costume. Spider silk armor was excellent armor, but enough layers of even the most breathable material got warm. Perhaps I could add vents, without compromising the armor? A problem for another time. I kept my stride steady as I thought on what I could do without alerting them?


A quiet riffle through their bags turned up nothing of use — no notebooks, no phones, just ration bars and ammo. Their pockets were trickier: I couldn’t always get insects in to feel out the contents, but I could feel the outlines through the cloth, trace them out over patient minutes.


I paused before a hive and extracted a ration bar of my own. I held it out, and focused on the search while sleepy bees crawled to the hive’s entrance and deposited honey onto the dry granola and nuts. I chewed that first bite thoughtfully. A hint of apple? I extended the bar again, let the bees reload it.


While my body taste-tested this hive’s blend, my mind focused on what I could sense in their pockets. Wallets, keys, what felt like spare ammunition… even a couple of phones. Phone service was likely unreliable anyway, though I wasn’t sure what cell-towers, if any, had been re-established since the Nine’s visit. It was likely they had received their orders orally, or perhaps there was a piece of paper folded inside one of their wallets, or kept in some inner pocket where I couldn’t feel it. Well, couldn’t feel it without swarming them under, anyway. Which meant there was little I could learn from them now.


The more careful inspection hadn’t been entirely wasted. Their complexions were hidden under greasepaint, but the gaps in their clothes, where glove met sleeve or where the nape of the neck peeked out, still showed skin, and though insect vision wasn’t quite like human vision, particularly for color, and the lighting wasn’t great… those patches were distinctly pale.


I finished my bar with one last bite, took a water bottle from the compartment in the small of my back, and rinsed down the sweet and sticky remnants before turning away from the hive.


Pale skin meant Empire thugs, then. Probably. The Empire had been on my list anyway: this just meant dealing with it a little earlier than I’d planned, or trying to. Men, I could kill or capture — but an idea? An idea that justified its adherents, that offered brotherhood with one hand and designated scapegoats with the other? Some ideologies could be — had been — driven from existence… but it hadn’t been easy. Historically.


Well. Destroying the neo-nazi movement, everywhere, forever, might be difficult… but it was also not the goal. All I really needed to do was break their power in this one city, to ensure that the Empire didn’t simply expand to replace the gangs that had fallen.


Which left the practical question of how to begin: I could wait, see if they rotated in reinforcements or supplies, trace the chain that way… or I could bypass that step, and just go find Hookwolf. I knew his face, from my earlier attempts to map out the Empire’s chain of command. He wasn’t the type to hide.


I turned my steps onto another path and set the rising moon on my right as I moved northeast toward the camps the Empire had unofficially claimed.


···---···

 

[Mook91]

So happy to see this again! It feels like I'm dreaming.

 

[BloodtharstH]

it continiues. good start

 

[Anasurimbor]

And now we'll never know what happened in Miami...

 

[Frage]

And as I devour these written words with my eyes, I already hunger for more.

 

[Night_stalker]

Interesting to see the Empire resorting to ambush tactics. But naturally, sooner or later they'll realize they've been made, which begs the question of keeping some highly trained and well equipped troops out there for no reason, wasting their talents, or pull 'em back and hope she returns later.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

I didn’t think the Columbians would come this far north, but they surely had cause.

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Nitpick: If you're referring to the Spanish speaking country, you want to spell it Colombia.



It's been a while since the last two stories. Could we have a list of all of Brockton Bay's active parahumans by [Still Active, [group], aka [canon name if different]] / [Retired] / [Deceased]? (Except for any new ones who haven't been introduced yet, obviously.)

 

[thesevenwielder]

Man, it's been so long since I last read Cenotaph and Wake, I've forgotten a lot of the details. I'll need to reread them. Hopefully by the time I'm done with that there will be a new chapter out.

 

[RedX]

I've been waiting for this since the end of Wake. I'm delighted that you've elected to continue, Notes- and look forward with great anticipation to what you produce.

 

[utherdoul]

Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in... I was seriously wondering wether I was starting to stray away from the Worm fandom a bit but this might very well be the jolt I needed. More notes is always good.

Not much to say for this one. In many ways it's a bit of a "recap issue". Wondering if we'll learn what happened in Miami or if it will be relegated to mysterious incident. I remember there was some big trouble there from the PRT Directors interlude. If those are truly E88 – and that's quite an if: misdirection, assumptions and incomplete information is a staple of notes' writing – Theo is sure acting quickly on his promise to Hookwolf.

Defiant

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Probably mean Dauntless.

Titans

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Not sure if capitalisation is intended and/or needed.

I eagerly await for more.

 

[landcollector]

Nine days past, I’d walked up silent stairways, through hallways broken and slick with blood, felt the surviving staff and patients huddling in wholly justified fear from those I went to face. I hadn’t won the confrontation there so much as escaped it alive, but that night of horrors had ended with the Nine broken and fleeing… and the hospital staff, apparently, just going right back to work. I felt my cheeks pull back into a fierce smile and raised one hand in salute.


This was the city I’d fought for; the city I would see reborn.


Somehow.

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One can just feel the hometown pride here. I love it.

I paused before a hive and extracted a ration bar of my own. I held it out, and focused on the search while sleepy bees crawled to the hive’s entrance and deposited honey onto the dry granola and nuts. I chewed that first bite thoughtfully. A hint of apple? I extended the bar again, let the bees reload it.

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Very interesting.

I'm curious on who the sniper team is; could be E88 like Taylor suspects, but it's best to not be to tied to an unproven theory. Anyway, I'm delighted to see the start of the third in the Cenotaph story saga, notes. Eagerly looking forward to more!

 

[Dreitus]

Taylor is as creepy as she is sunshine and rainbows.

God it's good to see this again!

 

[Jim Starluck]

Man, it's been awhile... I can't remember, who in the BB cape scene is still alive at this point?

 

[Iceman331]

It's been a while since the last two stories. Could we have a list of all of Brockton Bay's active parahumans by [Still Active, [group], aka [canon name if different]] / [Retired] / [Deceased]? (Except for any new ones who haven't been introduced yet, obviously.)

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Did you read the chapter? It's all there...

 

[RubberBandMan]

Hrm. She really should of thought about Coil's men. They were all mercs, and not all of them were in the base. Someone might of picked them up on the cheap for some simple recon.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

Did you read the chapter? It's all there...

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The chapter was a good recap overal, but it didn't give names within each start-of-canon group. A list would do that.

 

[Night_stalker]

I'm curious on who the sniper team is; could be E88 like Taylor suspects, but it's best to not be to tied to an unproven theory. Anyway, I'm delighted to see the start of the third in the Cenotaph story saga, notes. Eagerly looking forward to more!

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PRT would have drones or something, the fact that these snipers are remaining dead silent, YET are a 3 man team....

Snipers usually do pairs. Three is unusual, really unusual.

 

[jderig]

So happy that it's back! I'm ready for Taylor to run circles around the enemies of Brockton Bay!!

 

[utherdoul]

Dramatis Personae:

Empire
Cadmus/Theo
Hookwolf
Othala
Purity
Fog
Alabaster
Crusader
One of the twins

New Wave
Everyone but Brandish

Protectorate/Wards
Armsmaster last we heard was critical but stable in a Boston Hospital.
Miss Militia
Dauntless
Battery (in the Wake epilogue they were due to be back from their sabbatical)
Assault (see above)
Weld
Gallant
Vista came back from her coma (possibly because Amy was forced to break one of her self imposed rules during her Nine test)
Insight/Tattletale
Skotos/Grue

Others
Regent now going by the name of Etienne
Maybe Bitch (in the epilogue she was "camping")

And that's it I think.

I'm also taking the liberty of writing a more detailed summary for Cenotaph and Wake since it seems something that might be useful.

 

[drakind]

I could feel my way through the darkness with my swarms, but with the moon not yet risen there was nothing to see with my body’s eyes but blackness.

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When did she get her eyes back?

 

[Dareth]

Omg, it's happening again!!!

 

[utherdoul]

When did she get her eyes back?

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Right before her final confrontation with the Nine. After she escapes with Amy, Madison and Weld's head.

 

[RubberBandMan]

When did she get her eyes back?

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Amy fixed them before her last big fight in Wake.

 

[Guile]

and conflict had emerged without my guiding hand.

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Well that's soundbite-able.

Despite the tidal waves, despite the fires, despite all that had devastated my city so… here, the only truth that mattered was springtime.

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This too.